A weekly column featuring
progressive viewpoints on national and international issues
under-reported in major media

For release Oct. 8,
2001

Media's Role During the Nation's Crisis:
Investigative Journalism or Cheerleading?

Interview by
Scott Harris.

*Mediachannel.org's Danny Schechter says
the bottomline mentality of media companies takes precedence
over their public service responsibility, contributing to
America's illiteracy about the world.

**Note this
interview was conducted several days before the U.S.
bombing campaign against Afghanistan began on October 7,
2001

With flags waving on television screens and from
millions of car antennae, there is a public demonstration
of unity and determination across the country to confront
and defeat the terrorism that took an estimated 6,000 lives
on Sept. 11. But while this new patriotism sweeps through
the nation, voices of dissent during this crisis have in
some instances met with harsh condemnation and even
suppression.

Rage against those who don't follow the
prevailing line on the terror attacks was seen in the
recent firing of Dan Guthrie of the Grants Pass Oregon
Daily Courier who criticized President Bush for hiding in a
shelter during the assaults in New York and Washington. When
Tom Gutting wrote a column titled "Bush Has Failed to Lead
the U.S." in the Texas City Sun, the newspaper terminated
him and ran a front page apology. In covering a Sept. 29
peace demonstration in Washington D.C., the New York Times
chose this deliberately inflammatory and misleading
headline: "Protesters Urge Peace With Terrorists." Comedian
Bill Mahr, host of television's "Politically Incorrect"
lost many advertisers after he commented that the U.S. was
cowardly in "lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles
away." White House spokesman Ari Fleischer later denounced
Mahr and warned that "Americans need to watch what they say,
(and) watch what they do." This comment was deleted from a
White House transcript of the press conference, according to
the New York Times.

Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke
with journalist and author Danny Schechter, executive
editor at Mediachannel.org, who, over the last four decades,
has worked for both corporate and independent media outlets.
He examines the role of the press since the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks.

Danny Schechter: Most of us are
relying on television for our news and information and most
of the reporting on television is very much alike. When you
flip from channel to channel you find the same sources,
almost the same story line-up presented in the same way by
people who look very much alike. And often what's missing in
that media mix is context, background, analysis ways to
help us make sense of and interpret what we're hearing,
understand why it's happening and what the various options
are.

We're in a situation where the pundits who are called
on to explain all this to us often are people who come out
of government, either this administration or the last
administration or the kind of policy 'wonks' in Washington,
D.C. mostly drawn from conservative think tanks -- the
Heritage Foundation, the Brookings Institute, the American
Enterprise Institute, the Center of International Studies,
so-called terrorism experts and the like. The problem here
is that often these people are either wrong; don't really
understand what's going on. Voices from other countries,
other people who've had experience with terrorism over many,
many years are not being heard from. That's what Media
Channel is pointing to, the need for more contextualized
and diversified coverage.

Dissent tends to get
marginalized if reported at all. Critical views are not
being raised. People who raise them, or make comments
construed as critical are having their patriotism
questioned and I think that's something that is really
dangerous.

Between The Lines: George W. Bush, during his
address to Congress talked about the new war America will be
waging against terrorism. The old saying goes, "the first
casualty of war is truth." We've seen a series of
clampdowns in the media against people who are dissenting
from the 'line of march.' We had a journalist at the Daily
Courier in Grants Pass, Ore. fired. We had a journalist at
the Texas City Sun fired. We've had Bill Mahr of the
television show "Politically Incorrect" in jeopardy of
losing that program, because of some remarks he made about
"cowardly acts." But I wanted to get your comments on what
happens in a time of crisis in the United States, such as
what we're seeing now, to those who do come to the media
with a dissenting voice.

Danny Schechter: I am writing
about that now. There is a danger that journalism can
become jingoism. If you look at the New York Times, Anthony
Lewis who has been a big critic of President Bush, had a
recent column basically praising Bush to the skies.
Liberals tend to form a consensus of support around the
government, and the range of permissible debate -- as Jeff
Cohen of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) once
said -- is from A to B, not from A to Z. So there's a
tendency to rally around the flag and to share the same
policy assumptions.

There's also a very heated debate on
the left right now between author and columnist Christopher
Hitchens and MIT professor Noam Chomsky and others who are
really poles apart about whether or not criticizing U.S.
policy is insensitive to the victims of these attacks.

Between The Lines: What kind of duty does the media have
to answer the question that so many people are asking after
these terror attacks -- and that question is: "Why do they
hate us so much?"

Danny Schechter: I think obviously there
have been these cutbacks in coverage and the reason for
them is all these media mergers. The profit, the bottom line
needs of these companies has come before their public
service responsibility to educate and illuminate issues for
the majority of Americans. So yes, this is a big problem --
a kind of illiteracy about the world. It's something we
need to do something about. Of course the media has a
responsibility to do more.

What happens in media
organizations often is that the executives are making
decisions about what should be covered and what shouldn't be
covered. They say, "well, people aren't interested in this,"
translation: I'm not interested in this. In other words,
they're not interested assuming the rest of us aren't. When
"60 Minutes" covers a story from another country, you know
what? The ratings do not go down -- people are interested.
Why? Because it's well-presented, it's interesting. That's
what we need, more coverage that's interesting, that's
well-sourced, where you have enough time, not 1 minute, 10
seconds to explain the history of the world.

There were
reports issued warning of terror attacks. They happened to
occur during the Gary Condit craze in Washington, so they
weren't even reported. We need to ask some questions like
what is going on, why is the U S. government with a $344
billion defense budget unable to protect Americans? We need
to ask ourselves what are the interests of the oil industry
and the defense industry in this particular situation. Who
is benefiting from these policies? What is the likely
outcome of all of this? What are the deals going down? In
other words, we need to get a deeper understanding of what
is happening, so that we don't put ourselves in the service
of policies that fail. We've done that for many, many
years.

The Republicans were saying "we need to get tough,
we need assassinations." And it turns out that former
President Clinton had authorized assassinations, they just
weren't successful.

Looking at the policy is important,
looking at the media and media coverage is important.
Writing letters to the editor, writing emails to
columnists, feeding back to the media; that's very important
as well. In another words, it's not enough to sort of stand
by and say, "Ahhh look at that, what do you expect?" Get
involved!

See related links and
listen to an excerpt of this speech in a RealAudio segment
or in MP3 on our Web site at: www.btlonline.org
for the week ending 10/12/01.

------

Scott Harris is
WPKN Radio's public affairs director and executive producer
of Between The Lines. This interview excerpt was featured on
the award-winning, syndicated weekly radio newsmagazine,
Between The Lines, for the week ending Oct. 12, 2001.

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